


Song of Myself

by ennedepaix



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Established Relationship, HP: EWE, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-04-10
Updated: 2012-04-10
Packaged: 2017-11-03 09:49:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/380073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ennedepaix/pseuds/ennedepaix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Draco ponders many a thing, mainly himself. Although all is not always as it seems and many things need explanations, which sometimes can't be found. Even so, he tries his best.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> This is a series inspired by the prose poem Song of Myself by Walt Whitman. While, technically, this is a WIP, there are no cliff-hangers so please don't be put off.  
> Italics denote Walt Whitman's work.

1.

_I celebrate myself, and sing myself_

On very rare occasions, I honestly do celebrate myself. I celebrate still being here; being here at all. After an entire childhood of being pressured, to the point where I was broken, into believing I was worthless to the point where ending my life seemed the easiest way to find peace, I found I was something. Or rather, **someone**. I was someone who deserved a life, love, affection and the right to choose what to do with myself. Although, with this realisation, came another: I didn’t know who I was. My own sense of self had been taken away by my parents and, with their deaths, I had no way to find it again. Or so I thought. 

In order to finally understand myself, I had to learn to love myself. I mean to say, I had to learn to love the person I am; I don’t mean I’m going to imitate Narcissus in any way, shape or form. I have never harboured any intentions of drowning myself, least of all in my own reflection. Half the time, I could barely stand to pass by mirrors. The easiest way I found to love myself was by falling in love. That done, ridiculously quickly I might add, I had to start to love myself, celebrate myself, sing my own praises. The man I fell in love with, his name’s Harry by the way, made me say things I liked and appreciated about myself out loud. I couldn’t think of any for such a long time but with much nagging and many encouragements of how it didn’t matter if it was mundane to the point of deathly boring, I managed to say,

“I like that I’m capable of writing. I like being able to write good essays and never make spelling mistakes.”

I was blushing madly at how stupid it was but when I finally risked looking at Harry I found him with a smile on his face. ‘A good speller’. It sounds pathetic doesn’t it? Yes, I know it does, but it honestly was the only thing I could think of which I truly believed. It wasn’t as random as it seems. I was amidst my first year at a Muggle university, studying History and Sociology. I had trouble making friends and I had trouble speaking to my lecturers face-to-face, no matter how much encouragement they gave me – I was almost embarrassingly shy and nervous; brought up to believe I had to revere my elders, fear them even – but I could always be confident my work was up to scratch.

I gradually got better at making these proclamations about myself. Most of the time Harry had to persuade me to say them but it did get easier. My fourth such statement was made to Harry,

“I love that I can make you smile and laugh and I love that being with me is what makes you happy.”

Sometimes they were statements that meant something and sometimes they were silly. Like when Harry teased me after we had made love.

“I’m absolutely knackered now. I’m going to have to leave you for someone who’s crap in bed if you keep insisting on making me come so hard,” he’d said, grinning at me across the pillows. At that, I pushed him onto his back, straddling his hips, and I remember being pleased with myself when his eyes lit up in anticipation and his breathing quickened, noticeably. His teasing led to my seventeenth proclamation,

“But I love being capable of making you come so hard so I’m afraid I’m going to need to keep you all to myself.”

Harry’s eyes suddenly softened under my stare and he said,

“Wow, I didn’t even have to push you into saying that one.”

It took me a few seconds to work out what he meant. I almost made a sarky reply but then I realised he was being sincere so I kissed him instead. We ended up making love again and again and again. I missed my afternoon lecture, Harry missed his evening seminar and we both missed the film we were meant to have seen with Hermione. She took a while to forgive us for standing her up.

It took a long time, and I don’t know if I ever really came to **love** myself, but I do feel I understand enough of me and who I am for life to make sense. Plus, I can laugh at myself now; something which shocked Harry the first time it happened, I can assure you.

Harry’s the one I owe it all to, I suppose, but he’s never accepted the thanks I’ve offered time and time again. I haven’t thanked him for a while, actually. As _I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass_ in our garden, I turn to him and say,

“Thank you.”

And he shakes his head and says, “Hush, Draco.”

 _I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health_ , lay and laze and look back with wonder at the twenty years I’ve spent with the same man and at a relationship I’m wishing will last even though I’m quite sure its foundations don’t need strengthening with such thoughts.

_Hoping to cease not till death._


	2. Two

2.

I’m in a constant battle. I never can choose between inside and out. I used to spend as much time as possible outside; memories of being locked away so often and lengthily in my childhood too much to bear. Then Harry and I bought a house together and everything changed. The house and garden fight for my attentions although they both have my affection.

I’ll be outside, at ease in the garden when the scent of our house draws me in. 

_Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes,  
I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,_

I regard every smell as a perfume and I have a sensitive nose on me. You could blindfold me, deafen me, carry me around and deposit me in any room of our house and I would be able to tell you which one it was by smell alone.

Dining room: oak, leather, wine, roses – their scent seeps in from where the bush rests outside, underneath the window-ledge – and cigars.

Front room: tea, dogs, cigarettes, irises – there is always a vase full of them on the corner table by the bureau – and tapestries.

Bedroom: cotton, rain – the stream that cuts our garden in two runs directly underneath our bedroom and the flowing water somehow gives off this slight smell of rain at all times – and there’s also a perpetual smell of sex, no matter how clean the sheets, as if all the many, many times Harry and I have made love have managed to seep into the walls, ceiling, furniture, floor, leaving an indelible imprint of our true selves in, on and all around the house.

Kitchen: the herb garden outside, the garden in general, jasmine in the evening, marble – you might think marble can’t have a scent but it’s precisely that fact which makes it smell so specific; clean, smooth, hard – and paint.

All the rooms smell different. However, every room smells of Harry and of home and, half the time, I can’t tell the difference. I want Harry’s scent to become me, for me to become it and to be intoxicating and intoxicated.

_It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it_

Sometimes I worry if I concentrate on it all too much it will crawl inside me, seeping through my skin and then olfactory sense will take over my entire life. _The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it._

There are more than a scant few of the permanent notes of scent in the house. Apart from Harry and home and whatever mixture they eventually became to me, I can also always smell myself; 

_The smoke of my own breath  
Echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine.  
My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs_

The beach and the woods are another two scents that manage to infiltrate every nook and cranny of the house;

_The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and dark-color’d sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,  
The sound of the belch’d words of my voice loos’d to the eddies of the wind_

I wonder sometimes if touches have perfumes of their own and why, to my nose, the scent of Harry and I as one has invaded every pore in the building and every atom of the grounds. If every touch – _A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching round of arms_ – left its own mark of scent in the house, and if these scents were in some way visible, I would not be able to see my own hand in front of my face.  
It’s strange how smells are connected to past experiences. Sense memory, isn’t it? For example, the smell of turpentine reminds me of Severus Snape. Thinking about him invariably leads to memories of him trying to convince me I was allowed to think for myself, think my own thoughts, agree and disagree with whomever I pleased about whatever I pleased. He really had to drum it in. Constant repetition eventually becoming ingrained on my mind. 

_You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,  
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,  
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self._

Constant repetition until I snapped, threw a heavy tome at him and screamed at him to stop telling me what to do, which, I appreciated afterwards, was exactly what he wanted.

*


	3. Three

3.

I was a bit naughty during the War. I wasn’t a spy as such, because I didn’t flit between sides, but I was an eavesdropper to the excess.

_I have heard what the talkers are talking, the talk of the beginning and the end,  
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end._

There was this small problem, you see, of the elders abusing their powers and playing puppetry with my companions and I. By that time, I had been with Harry for about six months and he was their prime target; the one with the power, the one Voldemort was after and the only one, so they thought, who could get rid of him for good. Naturally, I didn’t appreciate my boyfriend being toyed with and, what with being cleverer than he’s given credit for, he didn’t appreciate it either. I, light-footed as I am, took it upon myself to hide within hearing distance of any meetings I knew about. I even managed to get inside the meetings on occasion. Needless to say, I purloined Harry’s cloak from time to time, with his blessing of course.

One of the most distressing plans I heard was, what you might call, a contingency plan; an ‘in case’; a last resort. I say ‘a last resort’ but they sounded perfectly willing to do it. 

_Urge and urge and urge_

The plan was such: if losses began to become too high, any children over the age of twelve would be magically induced to reach sexual, physical maturity, but not emotional or mental maturity, and then encouraged to the point of blind intimidation and coercion to have sex. Terrible, though, how the older students wouldn’t have needed this push. They were so desperate for physical contact and touch, they craved sex; took it wherever, whenever, however they could get it with no thought whatsoever to the consequences. I don’t know if I’m ashamed or not to admit I was just the same. At least I knew it was more than just sex with Harry, though; a small comfort but a comfort nonetheless. It was the War that did it. Dark times arrive and people become desperate; base instinct, animal instinct, breathe, eat, sex, touch… comfort? That most of all. All of a sudden, all of those things we had found so stupidly important vanished and barriers collapsed.

_Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always substance and increase, always sex_

The icing on the cake of this obscene plan was the extra spell, which would ensure pregnancy with a success rate someone in the region of nine in ten.

_Always the procreant urge of the world._

It made me feel sick. Terrible thing was that after I’d heard it, I went to Harry and took him to bed. I needed to feel that sex could be about something other than this absurd obsession to reproduce as if new children could actually replace people who had died. I needed to know it could be about what it **should** be about; lust, passion, adoration, love. That’s all I can say to explain; _To elaborate is no avail, learn’d and unlearn’d feel that it is so._

I suppose I should have considered myself lucky because I knew I would never let myself be part of that plan. I knew about it and could not be taken by surprise. I could warn my friends, if I could call them ‘friends’ at that time. I was lucky because they couldn’t force me to sleep with a girl and, even though it was possible to make males bear children, they wouldn’t take the risk of having any of the men ‘incapacitated’ for so long. You wouldn’t often think being gay would save you from anything, would you? Although, in my case, it sort of did in that because I was gay, I fell for Harry, who saved me from a multitude of things.

It’s strange how, after so long knowing him, so long being with him day in day out, he is still so much of a mystery to me. However, there are also things about him I am so sure of I can feel them in my bones and they are a very part of me. 

He is steadfast in his loyalty to me, to his friends and those he considers a sort of surrogate family, but mainly, let’s be honest, to me. He is practically immovable – _Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical, I and this mystery here we stand._ – and heaven help those who cross him about me.

He is an honest man; honest to a fault. He told me once, many years ago, fifteen or more, that he didn’t know if he was still in love with me. He still loved me, still wanted to be with me forever, still was protective and marginally, in a comforting way, possessive, he still wanted to be my lover in every way but he didn’t know if he was in love with me. He explained all of this to me – honest to a fault, I remind you – because he didn’t want me to carry on believing something that might no longer be true.

What did I do, I assume you want to know? Well, I cried and threw things and I locked him out of the house (for an hour or two but then it began to rain and I felt guilty about leaving him to get wet so I opened the door). Then, when I had rid myself of these initial reactions, I called him and he came into the living room where I was sitting at the time. I looked up and he came towards me nervously. I waited a moment but then pushed him to the floor and kissed him with everything I could muster. I made love to him for hours and he let me and he pleaded and begged me to do it again and again. I did. 

I made him laugh and I made him cry. I made him smile and I made him shout. I made him remember that I knew him better than anyone else, being able to do this to him was proof of that. I made him remember why he fell in love with me in the first place and made him realise how easy it would be to do it all over again if he wanted to. 

He wanted to. He fell. And it was easy; easier than the first time, he said. It was odd watching as he fell in love with me that second time because I wasn’t distracted by my own budding feelings as I was the first time around. Although, while he fell in love with me again, deeper than the first time he tells me, I fell further in love with him and remembered what it felt like to be falling rather than fallen. I also remembered it’s not all easy. There were ups and downs in our relationship from the moment it began, there still are and I’m sure it will continue. There are the arguments and the clashes, the tears and the angered words, and the comments we inevitably come to regret. Then, conversely, there are also the casual touches that fulfil our need for affection until there is time for something more passionate when clothes are ripped, moans are spilt, names uttered, pleasure freely given and received. There are the softly spoken words just before sleep or just after waking. There is the arm draped across my waist when I wake up, which wasn’t there when I fell asleep. There are the kisses, embraces, shags, fucks, love-makings.

There is the good and there is the bad and that is what makes it so real, almost tangible.

I also know he loves me. This is the thing I know the most. I know he adores me. He adores me in every way I can adore myself and every way I can’t as well. For all the things I managed to appreciate, for all those proclamations I made there are things, even now, with which I still have trouble. It is not quite so bad now as it used to be. 

When Harry and I were first together, we quickly got to the stage where kisses, frantic gropes, tossing each other off, blowjobs weren’t enough. I wanted him more than I’d ever thought possible. I wanted him everywhere; in me, on me, under me, around me, inside, outside, on top, any way I could have him. But I didn’t want him to see me. Now, I had scars, yes, but that wasn’t why I didn’t want him to see me. I didn’t care that I **had** scars, I cared that I **felt** like one. Scars were blemishes, blots on my skin but I felt like my body – every single bit was vile to me – was a blot on the world. I felt like no part of me should exist; not mind nor soul not body. Clothes were my armour. It wasn’t about physical appearance because I knew he didn’t care. It was, as usual, all in my head. So, the first time we had sex, I made sure everything leading up to it was fast, so fast neither of us had a chance to get any significant amount of clothing off; just enough for him to have access to fuck me into the wall. He was sixteen, what did he care whether we were completely naked or not?

I got a thrill out of knowing he wanted me so much he’d take me any way I’d let him have me.

Even so, he still noticed what I’d done. He’s bloody observant for someone who can be so dim when he feels like it. We were slumped, exhausted, on the floor afterwards when he said to me, “Next time, it’ll last ten times as long, it will be in a bed and we will both see every inch of each other. I know what you did and why, Draco, but you should know to trust me more. Next time… Next time, it’s all or nothing.”

His words rang true. He told me he wanted to see me; all of me, wanted to know my body and know every single bit equally well. He showed me that what I thought was wrong.

_Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be less familiar than the rest_

“All or nothing,” those were his words. They say a lot about him. 

He’s always there – _the hugging and loving bed-fellow sleeps at my side through the night_ – and has been for twenty years and will be for so much longer than that. I know how lucky I am to have someone like him but, only on very rare occasion, do I let myself realise that Harry is just as lucky, because I am always there for him. ‘All or nothing’ works both ways.

*


	4. Four

4.

Going out was, for at least three years after the War, a huge effort. It’s astonishing how long people take to forget who you are and it’s amazing how many questions they think of to ask; having said that, it’s equally amazing how many times one gets asked the exact same question.

Of course, the first time Harry and I prepared to go out, we were excited, anxiously so but excited nonetheless. We were thrilled that, after so long, it was safe for the two of us, especially Harry, to go wherever we pleased. Not that we were being very adventurous, we were only going to Diagon Alley so Ron and Ginny could meet up with their parents. Harry hadn’t seen Molly and Arthur Weasley for over a year so he took the opportunity to go along and catch up. I went because I knew they were a big part of Harry’s life and I was planning on staying with him so, in my mind, I had to at least show my face to these people, who were practically adoptive parents to Harry. Harry loved both them and I, admittedly in very different ways, so it wouldn’t do for us not to know each other. And so, we prepared to go out. Ron and Ginny had left over two hours earlier so they could have some time alone with their parents. Harry and I made good use of the two hours, spending some much-needed time alone with each other. I’m sure you can guess what we were doing.

It was the first time we’d had alone since the War ended, around six weeks previously, where we both had clean bills of health and magic. Some couples might have spent this time talking, just enjoying each other’s company, holding each other tenderly in their arms but, despite being absolutely, and self-admittedly disgustingly, in love, Harry and I were still teenagers and we weren’t ashamed to admit we were still, in the majority, hormone-driven. Those two hours were the best we’d had in months, if not ever at that time. We’d been constantly hounded by anyone and everyone who could get into Hogwarts, during and after our stays in the hospital wing, which were entirely too long and unnecessary for my liking. Horrible place; cold and clinical. Although, I suppose I should be used to that sort of thing by now, what with the various imprisonments. Anyway, the point is that those two hours are a piece of time I think impossible to forget. I don’t know why it was so different to any of the other times we’d spent lost in each other’s bodies. Perhaps before, preoccupied with the War and other happenings, we were too afraid to lose ourselves so completely and absolutely as we did in those two hours. I’d try to explain but I really do feel it was truly indescribable. It’s probably for the best that it is; if it could be described, every person in the world, bar Harry and I, would be in a state of permanent envy. I don’t think anyone else could ever experience the same things we did in that time. I don’t mean to brag but I have no trouble with bragging unintentionally.

In hindsight, it was a miracle either of us even managed to catch sight of the time. Second miracle: I allowed Harry to suggest leaving the bed. Third, and most astonishing, miracle: I **agreed**. I must have had temporary insanity from all the orgasms.

Neither of us ever imagined the circus that was awaiting us. Of course, nobody knew we were going out so nobody around us had cameras or anything but, when you’re a wizard, such things take only an instant to get hold of. If we had known what it was going to be like, we would never have even entertained the idea of going. Ever since I escaped the hell that was ‘life’ as the Malfoy heir, son of uncaring, violent parents who had no problem abusing me mentally as well as physically – mental abuse was their speciality as I recall – I suffered from panic attacks. They could be mild ones I could control myself, which would occur when I became frantic, got overly worked up over something small – effects being quickened breathing, slight dizziness, small shakes enough to be hard to notice – or they could be very severe. The severe ones were triggered by feeling trapped, fear, worry for those I cared for and, also, large and oppressive crowds. Do you see where the problem occurred?

 _Trippers and askers surround me,_ wanting to know why I went against my family, why I played such a major part in the War and the defeat of Voldemort, why I didn’t take the Dark Mark, why I refused to kill for the most part and only ever captured and incapacitated. And was it true I was in a relationship with Harry Potter? Not that, at the time, Harry’s arm was around my waist; does that perhaps show how dim these people could be? Not that they knew, but Harry’s arm was not around my waist in some sort of outward display of affection but rather because he had had the same thought I had when we saw the murmurs begin and a crowd began to form and surge towards us.

The thought: No.

He knew I wouldn’t last long under the onslaught. So, while he ignored his own bombardment of questions – questions the same as the ones I’d been asked – he tried to manoeuvre me through the mass. Unfortunately, I was already at a stage where I couldn’t put one foot in front of the other properly and I could barely breathe so I wasn’t much help. My eyes rolled back in my head and then it was black; well, sort of misty with fluorescent patches actually but that doesn’t sound quite so dramatic, does it?

Next I knew, I was in a room in The Leaky Cauldron, lying on a bed. Harry was holding my hand, Mrs Weasley was pulling a blanket over my legs. Mr Weasley and Ron were conversing quietly on the far side of the room. Ginny was leaning against the wall by the door, staring at the ceiling. Harry didn’t say anything when he saw me open my eyes. He just smiled and, because that was all he did, I managed to find a small one to give in return. Nobody else seemed to have noticed my awakening; I’d simply and calmly opened my eyes and Harry hadn’t reacted in any way which drew attention.

“How long ago did I collapse?” I asked. Mrs Weasley stopped fussing with the blanket and rushed to the head of the bed.

“Not long; less than half an hour,” Harry told me. As I sat up and nodded, I felt Mrs Weasley’s hand descend on my forehead.

“You’re not running a temperature,” she informed me. I looked at her with, judging by her reaction, a sharp gaze.

“Well, I wouldn’t be running a temperature because I’m not ill.”

She made a clucking noise. “Someone who’s not ill does not collapse in the street.”

Hearing Harry sigh, I turned to look at him. He hadn’t told them. I raised an eyebrow at him and he shrugged, saying, “It’s not my place.”

Everybody lapsed into silence and I realised they were waiting for me to offer some sort of explanation.

“I… I had a, er…” It was unlike me to stutter and hesitate and, after a squeeze on my hand from Harry, I quickly rectified the situation. “It was merely a panic attack. All those people. It’s nothing to fuss over.” Wanting to distract from what had happened, I held a hand out to Mrs Weasley. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“And you, dear,” she said, taking me hand and glancing at mine and Harry’s joined hands at the same time. 

“Draco and I are… together, Mrs Weasley. We’re a couple,” Harry said, giving an answer to the unasked question. Mrs Weasley took a deep, seemingly fortifying, breath and nodded once. 

“Lovely. Welcome to the family.”

And that was that.

It was as though you suddenly became a social commodity if you were a “war hero” or a “veteran”. You became a commodity people would give their wand arms for. I couldn’t stand it. I still can’t. Ever since the War ended, from a few days afterwards to this very moment, Harry and I have had an overabundance of invitations – _the latest dates, discoveries, inventions, societies, authors old and new_. There were certain events we were obliged to attend but it was mechanical; _my dinner, dress, associates, looks, compliments and dues_. It was a process ingrained on my mind and motor system. Unthinking. Did nobody realise Harry and I wanted to be at home with each other, alone?

These were the people I despised. I hated them for asking me the same questions over and over again. If they were inane questions (“What’s your favourite colour?”) I wouldn’t have minded quite so much but they ask, even twenty years on, about the War. So that, even twenty years on, I can’t escape the memories. _Battles, the horrors of fratricidal war, the fever of doubtful news, the fitful events_. Why on earth do people want to know about that? Surely they should count themselves lucky they didn’t have to look it all in the eye? Surely they should count themselves lucky they can leave their “heroes” to the joys of flashbacks in the day and nightmares in slumber and not have to experience it themselves? Twenty days after the War ended, these were daily and nightly occurrences; twenty years on they are occasional, coming in fits and starts – _come to me days and nights and go from me again_.

I suppose it’s all about morbid fascination with these nosy people; fascination with, what is to them, the unknown. In that respect, I shouldn’t hate them for it because it’s human nature, pure and simple. But I have no shame in admitting that I rather enjoy having a reason to hate them because they will **never** understand what **we** went through **for them**. They probably won’t even care. So they love me and I despise them because I am bitter. If you think that’s unfair, you can bugger off because I really couldn’t care less. We suffered for them and, really, I don’t think they’ll ever even begin to comprehend that.

And isn’t that just the way of the world?

*


	5. Five

5.

People ask me all the time to ‘tell all’ about my relationship with Harry. I mean, absolutely everybody, absolutely all the time. Even the people who should know better. Like Hermione! She’s always double-checking. You would think, after all these years, after having seen us in our best and worst times alike, she would be able to tell if something were wrong purely and simply by looking at us. But no. 

“So, Draco, how are things with you and Harry?” Things are as they always are, I tell her. 

“No problems?” No, none at all, I assure her. She always nods and smiles then, leaving a suitable pause before her next set of questions. She likes to make sure we’re all right in **every** area so she continues with these questions aimed at the both of us.

“So, no lovers’ tiffs or anything?”

“No, Hermione.” Harry always says this with a sigh.

“Neither of you have been working too much, have you?”

“No. We’re perfectly fine.”

“You’re not having any troubles in the bedroom?” She asks this because she has the knowledge of the frequency we were found shagging, especially in our late teens and twenties, when we were really meant to be meeting friends or going places. She asks because she knows we value our physical connection just as much as any other aspect of our relationship.

“The only trouble we have is that we have to change the sheets so often,” I tell her, often finding crudeness to be the best tactic. “Plus, I don’t know how much longer the bed will last before it breaks underneath us. I tell you, last night, it was making the most disconcerting noises.” 

Harry usually interrupts around here, “Hermione, if there were any problems, you’d see them. You can stop asking.”

“I could stop but I **can’t**. It’s habit for me to make sure everyone’s all right. You’re not the only people I subject to this.”

She says she hasn’t been able to stop ‘double-checking’ since the War. I know it’s not her fault and we shouldn’t really complain but, to be quite frank, it does become extremely irritating after twenty odd years.

If she just saw us when we’re together at certain times, she wouldn’t need to ask us the questions. For example, in the summer, when it’s somewhere between afternoon and evening, I go and sit outside when I get home from work. Inevitably, Harry is later arriving home than I. Most of the time, he doesn’t even bother going through the house and just climbs over the side-gate, straight into the garden where he finds me. He always stops walking for a moment when our eyes meet. We both smile and he starts walking towards me again. When he gets near to me, I hold out my hand.

_Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat_

He sits down beside me on the grass and we kiss while he loosens his tie before his hand settles on my back. Our chests press together and when we break the kiss, his voice is a low rumble as he asks about my day, tells me about his, drops into the conversation how much he loves me. _Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice_ ; the hum I feel travel from his chest through to mine. 

_I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning_

Once, we stayed outside through the night, barely sleeping, talking to one another for hours on end. We summoned food and water from the house when we needed it, didn’t summon blankets; holding each other providing enough warmth to warn away the midnight chill of that last night in July; Harry’s birthday. In the morning, the early hours, the dew seemed to still be hanging in the air, waiting before it chose to settle on the ground. I remember that I sat up when it finally occurred to me that it was morning and that light was seeping in through the gaps in the trees, casting dappled light and shade on our bodies. When I sat up, Harry moved. 

_I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning  
How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn’d over upon me,  
And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart,  
And reach’d till you felt my beard, and reach’d till you held my feet._

He placed his head in my lap and turned his face to look up at me. I lay back down and he crawled up my body to kiss me while he unbuttoned my shirt. He ran his tongue down my neck and onto my chest, firmly pressing his lips on the spot above my heart. He twined his fingers in my hair before running his hands down, over the stubble on my jaw, over the place on my chest where his lips had pressed, down over every part of my until he touched my feet. 

Then, he lay by my side, against me, on me, curled around me and we were silent. 

If Hermione only saw us at a time like that… She would **know**

_Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth_

If anyone saw us at a time like that, they’d be able to see. It’s at times like that where I feel at peace.

*


End file.
